Far-right influencers and MAGA provocateurs are currently flooding social media with baseless allegations that the attack on Ilhan Omar during a town hall event on Tuesday night was “staged” by the Minnesota lawmaker, calling it a “Somali False Flag Scam” and “Jussie Smollett 2.0.”
“Nobody cares about your staged victim propaganda,” self-appointed Trump “loyalty enforcer” and “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer exclaimed at Omar. “Please go back to Somalia. We are getting really tired of people like you taking up space in our country.”
Conservative YouTuber Anthony B. Logan, meanwhile, tweeted that the whole thing was “staged” because “Omar looked directly at the guy and nodded before he sprayed that stuff on her.”
Of course, those conspiracy theories that the incident – which saw a 55-year-old man rush the stage and spray an unknown substance on Omar – was “fake” and “orchestrated” only grew after Donald Trump threw more fuel on the fire by saying “she probably had herself sprayed” on Tuesday evening.
In the wake of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal officers amid the brutal immigration crackdown by the Trump administration in Minnesota, Omar used the town hall meeting to call for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the resignation of Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem.
Just as Omar declared that Noem should face impeachment if she didn’t step down, a man – later identified as Anthony Kazmierczak – walked up to her from the crowd and used a syringe to spray a brown-colored liquid at the congresswoman.
Kazmierczak would quickly be tackled to the ground and later arrested and charged with third-degree assault by the Minneapolis Police Department. Those in attendance said that the brown liquid had a strong, foul odor.
“Oh my god, he sprayed something on her,” a woman can be heard saying afterwards in a live stream of the event, while another urged Omar to seek medical attention. The congresswoman, however, insisted she was unharmed and continued the event.
“We are Minnesota strong. We will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us,” she said after returning to the lectern.
In a social media post after the attack, Omar stated that she was “ok” and thanked her supporters for standing beside her. “I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work,” the progressive lawmaker, who has faced numerous death threats,tweeted.
“I’ve survived war. And I’m definitely going to survive intimidation and whatever these people think they can throw at me because I’m built that way,” she said in an interview with CNN Tuesday night.
Democrats such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the attack “unacceptable” while criticizing Trump for relentlessly vilifying Omar, accusing the president and conservatives of fueling the incident with their inflammatory rhetoric.
In recent months, the president has described Omar – a naturalized US citizen who immigrated from war-torn Somalia as a child – as “garbage” and called for her to be “thrown out of our country.” His personal attacks on her have only grown amid the welfare fraud scandal that has implicated Somalis in Minnesota, which the administration has used as the impetus for its immigration crackdown in the state.
“She comes from a country that’s a disaster. Probably it’s considered, I think, the worst — it’s not even a country, okay? It barely has a government,” Trump said at an event in Iowa mere hours before the spray attack.
When asked about the assault by ABC News on Tuesday evening, the president fumed that he thinks “she’s a fraud,” likely referencing his repeated claims about her financial disclosures that show a possible increase in net worth due to her husband’s business holdings. “I really don’t think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” Trump further groused.
While the president acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the video of the attack, other pro-Trump social media figures and pundits shared clips of the incident on X and immediately accused the congresswoman of faking it in an effort to gain sympathy amid a Congressional probe of her finances.
This also included many of these personalities comparing her to Jussie Smollett, the actor who was convicted of lying to police about a racist and homophobic attack in 2019 that he was accused of staging himself.
“6 days ago new disclosures show Ilhan Omar went from $42 in her bank account to $25 million in 1 year,” Wall Street Apes, a prominent right-wing investment social media account, posted. “1 day ago Ilhan Omar’s wine business is exposed as fake making $5 million. Today Ilhan Omar gets ‘attacked’ on camera. They think we’re idiots. Jussie Smollett 2.0.”
Ian Miles Cheong, an Elon Musk superfan and professional poster, declared that “nothing about the ‘attack’ on Ilhan Omar is real” while claiming that Omar and Kazmierczak were in cahoots. “Look at how Ilhan Omar looks at the guy who sprayed her and gives him a little nod right before he springs into action,” Cheong tweeted.
“Tim Walz already blaming Trump without a single shred of evidence of who the guy who squirted Ilhan Omar is. That’s how you know this is probably staged. Somali False Flag Scam,” far-right journalist Drew Hernandez wrote on X, while also sharing photos of Smollett’s face superimposed on an image of Omar.
With other MAGA influencers and media figures calling it a “FAKE ATTACK” and the “most staged thing I have ever seen in my life,” Daily Wire host Matt Walsh chimed in on Wednesday morning to insist that even if the attack was legitimate, Omar didn’t deserve any sympathy. At the same time, he still leaned heavily towards the assault being a supposed false flag.
“I don’t know if the Ilhan Omar thing was staged or not. There’s certainly plenty of reason to be suspicious. We know that leftists do these kinds of hoaxes all the time, and Somalis are notorious scam artists. We’ll see,” the ultra-conservative commentator tweeted.
“What I do know is that leftist agitators are out in the streets every day accosting law enforcement officers and nobody on the left condemns it. Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck and they celebrated,” Walsh continued. “ Now Ilhan Omar gets sprayed with a liquid and we’re supposed to treat it like a national tragedy. Ilhan is going around calling herself a “survivor.” Democrats are issuing dramatic denunciations. It’s all fake. Even if it wasn’t staged (though it may have been), it’s still fake.”
